


A Body in Motion

by salanaland



Series: Kenway family feels [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Community: asscreedkinkmeme, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Revenge, Sad, Sexual Slavery, eagle vision - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 18:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salanaland/pseuds/salanaland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'd like to see someone's take on a different kind of Vision and how it affects a given assassin's life. Maybe Ezio can see red strings of fate. Maybe Altair sees daemons. Heck, maybe Desmond hears musical notes instead of seeing colors. Go nuts."<br/>http://asscreedkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/2158.html?thread=11327854#cmt11327854</p>
<p>(Apparently, every time someone says "assassin" in a prompt I translate it as "assassin or, you know, any old Kenway is fine too.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Body in Motion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anonymous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous/gifts).



She had always seen, but never told. Who would listen if she explained that the reason she never got lost in the market was that, when she opened her eyes a certain way and saw with her other sight, her mother always glowed bright gold, as bright as the southwest horizon? Once, when Mother told her that the sun set in the west, she had asked about that glow, and Mother had laughed uneasily and said it was a lovely tale she had made up. So she never mentioned it again, not to Mother, nor her grandparents, nor any of her family.

 

Who would believe that most of the servants were a dull blue, but the footman who was discovered with spoons in his pockets had always had a whisper of red about him? Who would believe that everything that moved, be it air, the water in her bath, or carts in the streets, had a color, a shine, faint as a whisper, shaky as an old man's hand? She knew how dice would fall as she walked past gamblers betting away their lives, she could see people's voices as tinted vapours from their mouths.

 

After Mother's illness and death, her grandparents were cooler towards her, with barely a whiff of blue to them. She was more than happy to pack her doll and her best dresses ("Make sure you tell that father of yours how well we have cared for you when he failed to") and set sail for the golden glow.

 

If wind and voices and her bath had been watercolours, the sea and the ocean were oil paints: brilliant, moving, pulsing, a symphony only she could see. No wonder her father lived out here, amidst the swirling spectrum. But if he could see it too, he gave no sign. Once, she tried telling him how it was that she could whirl through the quaint colonial market when they stopped in Boston. She set her mind to the things she wanted: an imported silk hair ribbon, a beaded bracelet in native patterns, fine embroidery floss made from Carolina cotton, a diary with a cunning little lock. Then she could bypass the stalls offering nothing of interest, heading straight for the treasures she wanted, shining among the dross like tiny lighthouses of gold. Her father simply laughed and paid, with the indulgence of a newly rich man inexperienced at fatherhood.

 

Soon enough, they were in London, and before long, she had a stepmother, and not long after that, she could see her little brother's feet colliding with his mother's belly right through her loose fitting gowns. It was fairly frightening, and when the little pest was born, he was such a strange purple to her senses that she took an instant dislike of him and all babies.

 

She also took an instant dislike to all young and not so young men once they started to court her. No matter how handsome a man was, if the very air around him glowed red--and many of them did--she recoiled. Most of the rest were as colorless to her sight as they were dull to her mind. Only a very few were blue, but they didn't make advantageous matches, her stepmother informed her. They were too poor to take care of her, or there was some family scandal so they could not offset her own family's scandal. Frustrated, she grew prickly and distant.

 

One day, she received the most unwelcome news that her father had accepted on her behalf a proposal from the worst of the lot, both ugly and a blazing red. On his innumerable, interminable visits, she was instructed to conceal her revulsion. One day, out of boredom and disgust, she managed to sneak laxative powder into his tea. Distracted by her simpering smile, he never noticed the bitter taste. When he ran out to relieve himself, she took the opportunity to rifle through his jacket pockets. Something in there was shining gold, sought after: a heavy ring of fine but ugly silver, stashed in a hidden pocket.

 

That night, she showed the ring to her father, and found herself surprised when he paled, angry when he explained, and furious when he refused to break off her engagement.

 

And a few nights later, after she had bought the little squirt a fine quill pen made from an eagle feather for his birthday, so he could more classily complain about her in his little diary, everything went wrong. And no matter how much she could tell they were enemies, which was pretty obvious when they killed her father and held a knife to her throat, there was nothing she could do. She could tell which way they were moving, but not defend herself. Her brother could not save her, and her fiance would not. And when she tried to call out to the maid next door, her words were puffs of silver lost in the confusion of fire and screaming, running and fighting.

 

For years she looked over every wall, hoping for a flash of blue or gold; white hood or silver blades, anything other than the pattern of the dry winds. The other girls were scant cover and no ally; the man she was given to was barely red, as he meant her no more harm than he meant to his silver spoons. Still she waited, and silently cursed that she could not wield sword or knife proficiently. Were she to attempt escape, she would surely die.

 

And when he came to rescue her, her stupid little brother blazed gold, and his friend glowed blue, and when they were surrounded by red, his friend's words spilled from his mouth in blue fog, and she was so stunned that her brother had to yank her away, abandoning his best friend at his own insistence. The turmoil of battle matched the tumble of her own thoughts. Freedom at last, galling that she had to depend on The Enemy, but he was her own brother. How had he ended up on the wrong side?

 

He blazed gold still as they raced to find his friend, and when he did, the scorching fire of his revenge upon those who had hurt his friend billowed blue and gold to her, the flames a glorious rainbow in the steely desert heat.

 

They laid low until the injured man could ride properly, then set out to kill her own blazing red fiance. And when they found him, awash in blood made fog, she lunged for him. And, once again, he captured her. But the swirling air of attack and counterbalance was no longer simply pretty colors to her, and a golden thread led across the floor.

 

She saw him move, saw him twitch minutely in this direction, and she understood. Strengthen his movement, overbalance him, lead him this way, turn, lean back, let go, and push. The blade was there, in the door, but the colors of the air led her to it, and she rejoiced in the relief of fulfilling her vengeance, of seeing red fade to black. Her gift had finally given her something she wanted. And she saw, unsurprised, that her brother's eyes flashed as gold as her own; was he afraid that he would be next to fall? Seeing each other blue, Jenny and Haytham exchanged no words but set about clearing the mess her ex-fiance had made of so many other lives, unable to fix the wreckage of their own.


End file.
